


Until Tonight

by Vorta_Scholar



Category: From Beyond (1986)
Genre: Creampie, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Neck Kissing, Penis In Vagina Sex, Reader-Insert, Riding, Sex, Sex in a Car, Smut, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:34:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27985467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vorta_Scholar/pseuds/Vorta_Scholar
Summary: Crawford and the Reader have been friends for 12 years, but one night after work, something changes. Their playful teasing turns into flirting, and after taking a walk together down by the river one night after work, they end up in the backseat of her car.
Relationships: Crawford Tillinghast/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	Until Tonight

“You can go ahead and connect those two wires,” you said, pointing vaguely with the eraser end of your pencil and continued making your notes.

He connected them, and tested the switch. One of the small, reddish lights came on, and he shut it off again.

“Alright,” you said. “We’re done with this part for now, so next I think we should—”

You were cut off abruptly by a loud _crack,_ followed almost immediately by a high, pained shout.

You laughed nervously and exchanged a somewhat embarrassed look with Crawford.

Well.

You _tried_ to exchange such a look, but as soon as your eyes met his, he looked away, and abruptly started straightening a stack of papers with clumsy, shaking hands. And when another scream came, he dropped the papers back onto the table into a pile almost as messy as the one before.

You cleared your throat uncomfortably.

“You’d think with all that money, he’d be able to get that room soundproofed,” you said, attempting a joke to lighten the mood.

“Ha,” Crawford said more than laughed. The sound was forced and flat-sounding.

“Or this one,” you said. “Either way.”

“He doesn’t care,” he said. “He wants us to hear.”

“You think so?” you asked.

He nodded, looking away as he straightened the papers again, successfully this time. The next scream came and he jumped, but luckily for him he had let go of the papers in time not to mess them up yet again. He reached out to straighten them anyway.

“Crawford,” you said gently.

He looked at you, and you could see then just how uncomfortable he was by the look in his eyes, even if he worked hard to make the rest of his expression look unaffected.

“We’re done with what we had to do today,” you said. “Do you want to, I don’t know, get out of here for a bit? Go for a walk? Get a bite to eat? See a movie? I don't know, just...something?”

“Um.” He swallowed hard. “Sure. Yeah. That sounds great, actually.”

“Let me get my coat.”

* * *

As soon as you were out of the house and no longer within earshot of what was going on upstairs, Crawford visibly relaxed. But relaxed for Crawford was really a relative kind of thing. You knew that well. You had to after twelve years of being friends.

When you met him in your Introductory Physics class in your first semester of undergrad and found yourself paired up with him for the lab portion of the class, he barely spoke, and when he did, it was almost always in a voice so quiet you could barely hear him. Not surprisingly, he looked at you even less. It took almost two months to get him to have a full conversation with you. But you quickly became good friends. Almost inseparable, in fact. Junior year, when you started talking about the possibility of going to grad school, he said that was something he had always wanted to do as well, so you applied to all the same places, and ended up getting your PhDs from the same institution as well. A few years later, you went back home to Miskatonic and got jobs as adjunct professors in the physics department at the university. It was only in the last year or so that he decided to leave the university to go work for this Pretorius guy. He said it paid better. You were happy for him, but you missed working alongside him after spending so much time together. When he told you Pretorius was looking for another assistant, you jumped at the opportunity to come and work with them. Now, though, you both seemed to be wondering the same thing: was it really worth it?

Crawford let out a heavy breath as he sat in the passenger seat of your car, picking at his left thumb nail, keeping his eyes low, on his hands.

“You know,” you said, “when you told me Pretorius was looking for another assistant, I thought we’d actually be, you know, _assisting_ him.”

“Yeah, me, too,” he said.

You smiled at him, and he smiled back.

“But it pays well, I guess,” you said. “Maybe not well enough, considering we’re doing _all_ the work, but…” You stopped at the stop sign and looked both ways before deciding at the last minute to turn left, clicking on your turn signal as you made the turn onto the vacant road. “It pays well enough to go see a movie.”

“That’s true,” he said. “I haven’t been in a while, though. I don’t even know what’s playing.”

“Me either. I guess we’ll see when we get there,” you said.

There were, in fact, several things playing that looked interesting, and that you normally would have watched without a second thought. But Crawford didn’t seem up for anything with any kind of romantic plots or subplots. Science fiction, you agreed, was also out of the question. You didn’t want anything that would make you think about work or which would annoy you with confusing or otherwise hilariously bad inaccuracies, even if it did tend to make for fun conversation afterward as you sifted through what they got right and wrong, and what they could have done differently. Horror was immediately out of the question, as Crawford said he would “like to be able to sleep tonight,” which made you both laugh, but you knew he was mostly serious.

In the end, you agreed on a kids’ movie that had a cat and a dog on the poster. You wouldn’t have to think too much about what you were seeing, and you doubted there would be anything too terribly uncomfortable for either of you in that particular movie. The girl behind the counter looked at you kind of strange when you asked for two adult tickets to the children’s feature, but sold them to you nonetheless.

The theater was empty, not that you expected anything less on a Tuesday night. You sat in the back, talking quietly as you waited for the movie to begin, a bucket of popcorn balanced between you on the armrest.

“We could totally just, you know,” you said, grabbing a handful of popcorn, “make out the entire time.”

He looked at you, a mix of confusion and bewilderment in his eyes, which made you laugh.

“Is that why you asked me here, Doctor?” he said, teasing. “To get in my pants?”

“Oh, definitely,” you chuckled before shoving your handful of popcorn into your mouth. “That’s been my goal all along.”

He laughed at your joke, but you could have sworn you saw something change in his expression, just before he looked away, shifting his gaze back toward the screen.

Maybe it was just your imagination.

Before you could think much more about it, however, the movie started, and for the next hour and a half, the two of you sat in relative silence in the darkened, empty theatre. That is, except for the brief moment when you threw a piece of popcorn at his face, just when he was beginning to look quite invested in the story.

He threw a piece back, and soon enough, you were engaged in a small-scale popcorn battle until finally you offered up a truce.

“Hey, stop,” you giggled. “Stop! They’re going to know it was us who made this mess and I don’t want to be the one to have to clean it up.”

“Okay. But you started it.”

“You continued it,” you said back.

He nodded, still smiling as he returned his attention to the screen.

* * *

It was cold down by the river. The late autumn chill clung to every bit of exposed skin, freezing your hands and face. You stuck close to Crawford, both of you making sure not to stray too far from the glow of the streetlights as you walked along the sidewalk.

He stopped, leaning on the railing which separated the pavement from a sheer drop down into the cold, dark, murky water. You could see his eyes taking you in slowly, as though he was trying to be discreet about it.

“What?” you asked, stopping to stand next to him.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just thinking.”

“About what?” you asked, nudging his arm with your elbow playfully.

“It’s nothing,” he said, looking down at his feet in an attempt to hide a small grin.

“You’re thinking about Martha Tanner,” you teased.

This was something of an inside joke between you. There had been a single week in your third year when a professor split you up, and for that week, Crawford was paired with Martha Tanner, a cheerleader, absolutely beautiful. And funny and smart and nice. She adored Crawford, but he was a nervous wreck around her. That whole week, you joked with him that if he didn't go home with her, you would. You never did, but to that day, you still weren't sure if he did. That didn't stop you from teasing him about it, though.

“What?” he asked, amused.

“Martha Tanner. Third year advanced physics. Your lab partner,” you said. “She had a thing for you.”

“She did not!”

“Oh, right. You had a thing for her.”

“I did not!”

You laughed, and so did he.

“What are you thinking about then, Crawf?”

His expression became serious, and he said, matter-of-factly, “It’s a beautiful evening.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad we did this,” he said, pushing himself off the railing and continuing down the sidewalk, back toward the parking lot.

“So am I.”

“Even if you’re not Martha Tanner,” he said, earning a laugh from you.

“Well, thanks,” you said.

“As a matter of fact, I much prefer your company,” he said.

Your smile fell, replaced by what was probably a look of astonishment. Not at what he said. Of course he preferred your company to that of someone who was his lab partner for a week. No. It was the way he said it. Like it really meant something.

You cleared your throat, and continued on beside him, keeping your gaze low.

A few minutes later, you stopped just beside your car. A soft, almost expectant sort of silence had fallen between you, filled only by the sound of cars up on the road past the opposite end of the parking lot. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Nothing with Crawford was ever really uncomfortable. But this certainly felt _different._ This silence wasn’t quite the same as the ones you were used to. There was almost a sense of anticipation to it, like you were both waiting for something to happen. Until finally it did.

He took one of your hands in his and you turned to face him, standing directly in front of him now, feeling more than a little surprised, and he smiled. It was that same cute, sheepish sort of grin you knew well. You couldn’t help but smile back.

“What?” you asked.

“Nothing,” he said.

Slowly, you took a step closer, and so did he.

“You sure?” you asked, swinging his hand in yours playfully. “Because this is new.”

“Is it?”

“A little, yeah,” you said. “I like it, though. If that means anything.”

“I do, too,” he said. “If that means anything.”

"Yeah," you said softly, looking at him, taking another small, tentative step closer.

His expression softened, and he leaned in to press a chaste kiss to your lips, but even after he did, his lips lingered on yours, barely touching. You kissed him back, a little less innocently this time, barely thinking, just letting it happen, letting yourself be drawn closer to him, shrugging away years of fleeting glances and overlong accidental touches and thoughts of _if circumstances were just a little different_.

But circumstances didn’t need to be different. They never did. You were certain of that now. It just took until tonight, here in this empty parking lot, to realize it.

“I like this, too,” you whispered, pausing, your lips still on his.

You could feel his lips twitch into a small smile against yours.

“Me, too,” he said, kissing you again tenderly as one of his hands came up to cup the back of your neck.

His lips were softer than you had expected they would be, and his hands were warm as they caressed your face, your neck. You grabbed onto fistfuls of the front of his sweater, pulling him toward you.

You felt his tongue brush against your bottom lip, and you parted your lips, allowing him to deepen the kiss. He pulled you in closer, one hand suddenly on your hip as he backed you up against the car door, pressing you between the cool metal and the warmth of his body. You wrapped your arms around his neck and arched your body into his, desperate for more of whatever this was.

“ _Hmm_ ,” he sighed, sliding his hand around to the small of your back.

His other hand came to rest on your hip, and he began to inch your sweater up higher so he could slip his hand underneath. You moaned into the kiss at the feeling of his hand, warm against your bare skin.

“Is this alright?” he whispered, his lips still on yours, his breathing heavy, mingling with yours.

“Yes,” you breathed, kissing him again as he pushed your knees apart with one of his and slipped his thigh between yours.

“And this?”

_“Yes.”_

You pressed your hips forward, prompting him to move his own. You could feel him, hard and throbbing against your leg through both your trousers. There was a dull aching between your legs as well, which was only intensified by the friction of his body slowly rocking against yours. _You wanted him._

But just before you could say so, the bottom of the sky fell out, and a cold rain began to pour heavily over the two of you where you stood.

“Oh, my gosh,” you laughed, letting your forehead fall against his shoulder before looking him in the eyes again.

“I didn’t even notice it sprinkling.”

“Me either,” you said.

“We should probably get in the car.”

“We should,” you agreed, nodding, and you opened the back door and got in, sliding across to the other side, and he got in after you and shut the door.

You pulled him in again, resuming the kiss where you’d left off, your hands playing with the hem of his sweater, giving him time to stop you before you began to pull it up, but he didn’t. Instead, he broke away, letting you pull it over his head, and he fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, watching desperately as you slipped out of your jeans, kicking them and your panties off into the floorboard at the same time, along with your shoes. He finally got his shirt off. The tighter Miskatonic-U t-shirt which was under his button down soon followed it into the floor.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and pulled yourself into his lap, needing to be closer to him. He ran his hands slowly over your thighs, then under your sweater, over your hips, your belly, higher until one of them reached your breast, and you sighed, closing your eyes, relishing the warmth of him and the softness of his hands on your body. You pressed your face into the crook of his neck, kissing the skin there tenderly.

His breath hitched in his throat and his body tensed for just a moment, his hands freezing abruptly on your back. You could tell he was nervous, but just as quickly as the thought entered your mind to stop, he sighed, relaxing underneath you, his hands sliding down over your hips, feeling the way they rolled against his, just once, and he groaned softly.

“I want you,” you whispered, your hands sliding down his torso to the front of his trousers. “I want you inside me.”

“You’re sure?” he asked, pulling back some to look at you.

“Yes,” you said. _"Ple_ _ase_.”

You raised your hips, giving him room to unfasten his trousers and push them down, just low enough to free himself. Kissing him softly, you reached down between your bodies to line him up with your entrance. His mouth fell open and his brow furrowed, his eyes closed tight as he let out a shaky breath at the feeling of you sinking down slowly onto his cock. Your own breath caught in your throat. He was big, somewhat bigger than you had expected.

“Oh, my God,” you sighed, squeezing his upper arms as you took more of him in.

He kissed your lips gently and touched your cheek. “Alright?”

“Yes,” you said, relaxing a bit.

You rolled your hips once, trying to find the proper angle, and you heard him make a small noise deep in his throat. His hips squirmed slightly.

“Alright?” you teased, rolling your hips again.

He gasped. “ _Yes_ ,” he said, his voice strained. “Don’t stop.”

You kissed along his jaw until you reached a spot just below his ear, which got a particularly delightful reaction out of him. His body arched into yours, and he buried a hand in your hair. He pressed his hips up into yours, prompting you to start moving, rocking your hips, slow and easy against his. At this angle, you could feel your clit rubbing against his shaft, and involuntarily, your hips pressed forward, taking him deeper into you.

“ _Mmm_ ,” you moaned, almost a whimper, your eyes squeezing tightly shut.

He pulled you into another urgent, hungry kiss, oddly out of tune with the slow, gentle movements of your hips. Nevertheless, you kissed him back, matching his intensity. His hands hooked behind your knees, dragging you even closer until your body was flush with his and his cock was buried all the way inside you. He pushed your sweater higher as his hands explored your body, and you broke the kiss to pull it off over your head. You dropped it on the seat next to him. His eyes took in the sight of this newly revealed part of you in breathless, open-mouthed awe.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathed, his lips returning to your neck, moving down to your shoulder.

He squeezed one of your breasts gently, and you moaned softly as your walls tightened around him involuntarily.

“ _Hng_ ,” he groaned, his hips pressing upward into yours. “You feel so good.”

“So do you,” you said.

You closed your eyes, your fingers digging into his shoulders as you moved just a bit faster, raising your hips higher, letting more of him slide out of you before taking him all the way back in.

“Oh,” he sighed. “Hmm…”

You could feel his breath on your neck, hot and wet and ragged, mixed with stifled and half-strangled moans as he fought to keep quiet. You had never been with anyone who had made quite so much noise, or who was so adamant to restrain their noises, but it turned you on even more hearing him like that, so desperate and aroused. You wanted to hear more.

“Crawford,” you breathed, carding a hand through his hair.

“Mhm?”

“The noises you’re making,” you said. “Please don’t feel like you have to hold back. I like hearing them.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I want to hear you.”

“Okay.”

A moment later, he let out a low moan.

It still sounded like he was holding back, as though he was afraid to let you hear just how much he really liked what you were doing. But over the next few minutes, he gradually let that go, and you heard him pant your name through a series of soft, desperate moans and whimpers, his lips pressed to your throat as your head fell back.

His lips migrated lower, to the tops of your breasts and the space between them, kissing softly and almost teasingly, before finally finding one of your nipples, at first only placing a gentle kiss to it, then running his tongue over it. You whined, placing a hand on the back of his head, twisting your fingers into his hair.

“Crawford,” you gasped, your mouth falling open and letting out a long, unrestrained moan as he wrapped his lips around your nipple, sucking it as his tongue continued to circle it. “ _Oh_.”

You were close, painfully so. Your clit throbbed against him, and your walls were just starting to contract, earning a groan from deep inside his throat, the sound of which vibrated beautifully around your nipple. His cock twitched inside you and his hips thrust upward, taking on the same steady tempo maintained by yours. You grabbed his hand from off your hip and pushed it down between your bodies. He got the message and began circling your clit with two of his fingers. You were wetter than ever, and you could hear the soft, wet _squelch_ sound as you fucked yourself on his cock, still going slow and deliberate, but picking up some momentum as you felt yourself nearing the edge.

And suddenly you came. _Hard._ Your walls clenched and unclenched around his cock, clenched and unclenched, your hips slowing some.

“Oh, my God,” you sighed. “Oh, _yes_.”

Your hips pressed forward one last time, and his rose to meet them, and he came inside you with a hoarse, shuddering moan. Your body relaxed and you laid your head on his shoulder, leaning heavily against his chest as you breathed in his scent, an odd mixture of sweat and rain and popcorn, the thought of which made you laugh quietly, the sound muffled against his neck.

Outside, the rain had stopped from the sound of things, but you stayed where you were, not yet ready to extract yourself from his arms. It felt too good letting him hold you.

“This, uh,” he said tentatively, his voice quiet, his fingertips tracing small patterns over your back, “this probably changes a few things.”

“Not in a bad way, though, right?” you whispered.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want it to, anyway.”

“Me, either,” you said. “In fact, I’m wondering why we didn’t do it sooner.”

You smiled, pushing yourself up some to look at him, and he smiled back.

“Well, you see, I was saving myself for Martha Tanner,” he said jestingly.

“No more Martha Tanner,” you giggled.

He kissed you again. “It was nice,” he said. “This. With you.”

“Yeah,” you agreed, resting your forehead against his. You wanted to stay there like that, but you knew you couldn’t. Sobering, you said, “We should probably get back soon.”

“I don’t think I want to go back there tonight,” he said.

“Where do you want to go?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just...not there.”

“My apartment is a few blocks away,” you said. “We could go there, get a shower, clean up, wash off some of the rain and the popcorn smell. Just hang out there until morning.”

“I’d like that,” he whispered, stroking your still rain-damp hair.

“And we can go back to Pretorius’s in the morning for work. I doubt he’ll even know we were gone.”

“He’ll know. And he’ll know what happened, too,” he said. “Or at least he’ll think he knows. And he’ll be right, at least partly.”

You brushed his hair back with your fingers. “You shouldn’t be so worried about what he thinks,” you said. “I’m not.”

“I know,” he whispered, taking your hand in his and bringing it to his lips to place a small, soft kiss against your palm. “He’s just...such an ass.”

“I know,” you said. “But hey, if this experiment works, maybe you and I will be the ones to get the credit for it and we won’t need him anymore.”

“Ha,” he scoffed. “Yeah, that’ll happen.”

You tumbled off of his lap and onto the seat next to him and as he pulled his trousers back up and closed them, you tugged your sweater back over your head. That is, before realizing it was actually his sweater. You started to take it off again once you realized your mistake, but he stopped you, laying a hand gently over one of yours.

“Wait,” he said, and you looked at him to see a small smile forming at the corners of his mouth in the pale stream of light coming from the streetlamp a few yards away from where you’d parked. “You can wear it. It looks nice on you.”

You smiled back. “Okay.”

“I do expect you to take it off again when we get back to your place, though,” he added a moment later, making you laugh.

“What are you suggesting, Doctor?” you asked in a tone of mock-innocence.

He gave you a small, sly but still somewhat sheepish sort of grin before pulling his t-shirt back over his head and reaching for his button down.


End file.
